Man suspected in region’s unsolved murders denied parole again

Both the medical examiner and police personnel were at a Shad Bay home in March as part of an investigation into a string of unsolved murders. Andrew Paul Johnson, 54, told a parole hearing police were wrong in thinking there was the body of an alleged victim on his brother’s property in Shad Bay. (TED PRITCHARD / Staff)

A former Halifax man suspected in a string of unsolved murders in Atlantic Canada has been denied parole again, in part because police are still investigating the killings, Parole Board of Canada documents released Friday show.

The documents also reveal that Andrew Paul Johnson, 54, said this spring that detectives were wrong in thinking there was the body of an alleged victim on his brother’s property in Shad Bay.

It’s the first time Johnson appears to have ever spoken about the ongoing police case.

During his hearing in April, board members asked him about the major search Halifax detectives conducted on the Prospect Road property in March.

“The reply you made was relative to the police being incorrect in suggesting that a victim’s body was found on the land of a close family relative,” board members wrote in their decision denying Johnson both day and full parole.

Some parts of the report are redacted, including who owned that property and details about ongoing murder investigations.

The board also said a psychologist who most recently interviewed Johnson, incarcerated since 1999 as a dangerous offender in British Columbia on sexual assault and abduction convictions, believes it is still too risky to let him out.

“The most recent psychological assessment concluded, after becoming aware of the ongoing investigation in Eastern Canada, that you would in all circumstance be a flight risk if the (releases) were authorized,” members wrote in their nine-page decision.

The psychological analysis was done in February.

Investigators scoured the Prospect Road property, where Johnson once resided about 20 years ago, for several days in early March. Officers ordered his brother out of the home while the search of the house, backyard shed and adjacent wooded area was conducted.

Detectives did not find human remains but did send cloth or clothing and pieces of wood obtained at the property for forensic analysis.

Johnson was suspected in at least one disappearance and two slayings dating back more than 15 years, including that of Kimberly McAndrew, who vanished in Halifax in August 1989.

On Friday, RCMP Cpl. Scott MacRae said he did not know whether results of the forensic testing had come back yet. The investigator in charge could not immediately be reached, said MacRae.

New information also came to light in the April parole report, including Johnson’s history of hiring prostitutes who appeared to be young looking. It wasn’t immediately clear when he solicited sex trade workers.

Board members said there were “inconsistencies” in his recounting of the number he had hired over a 10-year-period and also noted he had a propensity to downplay his “sexual addiction and behaviour.”

“The board explored your history of hiring sex trade workers,” the decision states. “You disagreed with the memorandum written by the police in Eastern Canada suggesting that you had a history of hiring small-breasted, young-looking sex trade workers.”

Johnson originally said he hired prostitutes up to four times per week but later said the total number he had hired was 10 to 20.

“You engage in minimalization over this issue,” the decision said.

Also new was a reference to Johnson’s assertion that he was abused by a man when he was a teenager, something he reasoned might be behind his sexual interest in teens.

“You had a preference for young girls between the ages of 12 and 14, and the board notes that in your index offending you specifically targeted girls of that age.

“You said that you were sexually attracted to girls of that age because of a link to your own sexual abuse that you suffered at the hands of a man when you were of a similar age.”

Johnson told officials he thought it was OK to get consent from underage girls because he didn’t look at them as children. But “you now acknowledge that they are underage children,” the decision said.

Johnson, who has a lengthy violent criminal history going back to the 1970s, was first declared a dangerous offender in May 2001. That label was imposed after he was arrested in 1997 in Nanaimo, B.C., after police learned a man was posing as a police officer attempting to get young girls into his car.

When he was picked up, he had a young, mentally challenged woman in his vehicle.

A psychiatrist who assessed Johnson in 1998 reported that his possession of a fake police badge and meat cleaver represented “a clear escalation in pattern,” a previous parole board document said.

The dangerous offender designation was removed after Johnson appealed in 2006, but he was reclassified at that level in April 2008.

Parole board members noted Johnson’s behaviour behind bars has been “satisfactory” and has been improving by taking some responsibility for his actions. But he had made some “inappropriate” comments to female staff members in prison, although he stopped after being spoken to about it, the decision said.

But the board also said he had never been able to abide by rules while he was out on probation for offences committed years ago.

There are also no facilities capable of housing and looking after him in Eastern Canada, where Johnson said he would like to return, members said.

By law, Johnson will next be eligible to apply for parole in March 2015. Offenders serving under such “indeterminate” statuses are allowed to have their case reviewed every two years.